Cyberattackers? SMH, I wish Putin would take off the gloves and blow Musk's satellites above Ukraine out of the skies. Guy wouldn't be so glib after that.
I wish Putin would take off the gloves and blow Musk’s satellites above Ukraine out of the skies
As far as I know that's effectively impossible. Starlink satellites are very small and anti-satellite missiles are very expensive. And there's a huge number of starlink satellites.
That said, there were unconfirmed rumors that Russia was testing an anti-satellite weapon that would somehow disrupt Starlink. I couldn't find any details though.
As to killing them, you only need guided munitions with targeting capabilities. That or kinetic weapons, just ram them with something that doesn't even have explosives but sufficient velocity (actually similar but much cheaper version of ICBM intercept kill glide vehicles as you don't need to maneuver as fast or much).
The real cost is in getting things up that high as you usually have to burn quite a bit of fuel and there's the logistics of it. Ideally you'd engineer some sort of fast military orbiter with a grabbing arm and grab and chuck those things with force back into the atmosphere or just straight up crush them in space but that's a little sci-fi though it would be cheap for dealing with the potential of hundreds of these things. That or a low orbit fighter. But I could see an uncrewed re-usable hardened vehicle that just goes around ramming these things one by one and damaging or destroying them. Satellites are built to be light not to survive any kinds of impacts so something with a toughened hull should be able to take out quite a few just by hitting them at speed before firing thrusters again and moving onto the next one.
Cyberattackers? SMH, I wish Putin would take off the gloves and blow Musk's satellites above Ukraine out of the skies. Guy wouldn't be so glib after that.
As far as I know that's effectively impossible. Starlink satellites are very small and anti-satellite missiles are very expensive. And there's a huge number of starlink satellites.
That said, there were unconfirmed rumors that Russia was testing an anti-satellite weapon that would somehow disrupt Starlink. I couldn't find any details though.
As to killing them, you only need guided munitions with targeting capabilities. That or kinetic weapons, just ram them with something that doesn't even have explosives but sufficient velocity (actually similar but much cheaper version of ICBM intercept kill glide vehicles as you don't need to maneuver as fast or much).
The real cost is in getting things up that high as you usually have to burn quite a bit of fuel and there's the logistics of it. Ideally you'd engineer some sort of fast military orbiter with a grabbing arm and grab and chuck those things with force back into the atmosphere or just straight up crush them in space but that's a little sci-fi though it would be cheap for dealing with the potential of hundreds of these things. That or a low orbit fighter. But I could see an uncrewed re-usable hardened vehicle that just goes around ramming these things one by one and damaging or destroying them. Satellites are built to be light not to survive any kinds of impacts so something with a toughened hull should be able to take out quite a few just by hitting them at speed before firing thrusters again and moving onto the next one.
Russians seem barely able to do conventional warfare. You want them launching shit into space?